


Being Baratheon Brothers

by belana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:05:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belana/pseuds/belana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War changes everything. And everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being Baratheon Brothers

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Быть братьями Баратеонами](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/31842) by Деяна Станкович. 



'To be a Baratheon is to be strong', Robert, the eldest son of Cassana and Steffon, always thought. Both his parents were descendants of the old Derbyshire families. Their ancestors came to England with William the Conqueror. Robert's parents were rather proud of the fact.

Robert was full of himself. He didn't give a damn about this aristocratic nonsense, it was only useful when he bragged about it to another dumb cow to get laid. Sex came easily to Robert - as well as a lot of other things. He graduated from the university with honours even though he was a skiver and a troublemaker and knocked up a couple of pretty salesgirls and typists in London...

Then the war came. And literately during the first days of mobilization the eldest Baratheon decided to become a submarine sailor. Big, muscular and healthy, Robert looked a giant in the tiny cramped submarine, but he proved his worth during the first enemy encounters so no one asked what this huge dark-haired man from Derbyshire was doing there.

One quiet and clear April night Robert's submarine received an SOS signal from a steel sister. Usually submarines were called 'steel coffins', but what could landlubbers possibly know about the sea? Out in the open submarines were always sisters.

They flew these ten miles as if on wings (or fins, or whatever), but it was too late. Robert used to take military service for a damn brilliant adventure, but at that moment he realized that everything had changed.

He knew those guys from HMS "Thistle". Scratch that, the captain of the ship, Eddard Stark, a sombre grey-eyed man from Yorkshire, was his best friend. Robert had heard a hundred times that Germans liked to shoot surviving British sailors, but now those rumours proved true: there were boats full of dead bodies with gaping holes where the eyes should have been (the damned Nazis must have had a sharpshooter in the crew), skull bits stuck in the bloodied hair of the British sailors...

Robert remembered that he prayed for the first time since childhood when turning Eddard's (no, Ned's, he had always been Ned) body, he prayed that he didn't have those wounds, that his friend had had an easy death.

He would have drunk himself into oblivion - submarine sailors always had a supply of red wine - but a Baratheon must always be strong. And the war wasn't over yet.

 

X X X

 

'To be a Baratheon is to be responsible', that’s what Stannis decided when he was still in school, decided once and for all. It must be said that he settled all questions once and for all because he only made decisions after careful consideration. Robert called him a bloody knucklehead when Cassana wasn't around, but Stannis didn't take offense, he calmly covered his ears and kept reading the textbook.

After finishing school Stannis decided to be a lawyer. He never would have admitted to anyone, but he desperately craved justice. Stannis had not thought it possible for him for a very long time by then. He craved justice for others. Stannis used to think that his parents didn't love him so he tried to convince himself that he didn't love them. Life was easier that way until after another London bombing Stannis returned home from the air-raid shelter only to find their Victorian house in ruins.

The parents had come to visit him, only him: Robert had already been training with the Royal Navy somewhere north, and Renly had been studying for a pilot somewhere south. Stannis silently came over to the policemen and helped to clear the debris - also without a word. He found Mr. Manderley, a stone wall flattened the cheerful fatty and he looked more like a piece of roll-out pastry. The old house didn't spare Walder Frey either who was said to be just as old as the house. He was a mess of blood and bones from the waist down, and his face was forever frozen in an ugly smirk. Covered in dust, Frey looked more like an Egyptian mummy.

Everyone dropped hauling off the wreckage at dawn, there were other things to do. The bombings weren't going to stop so clearing the damage was futile. That’s when Stannis thought that his parents were meant to be buried in a huge barrow. Maybe it was better than seeing what became of beautiful blue-eyed Lady Cassana and smiling strong Lord Steffon.

The very next day Stannis volunteered for the infantry to have an opportunity to kill - with a rifle, a knife, teeth or bare hands - to tear apart, to inhale the smell of blood and ash. To avenge.

 

X X X

 

'To be a Baratheon is to be loved', Renly was absolutely sure of it. After having Stannis, Cassana Baratheon couldn't get pregnant for quite some time, and she desperately wanted a girl. However, when a boy was born the parents were delighted. It seemed that sweet and lively Renly could charm anyone, and he shamelessly used it to his own advantage.

He was the most popular boy at school and had barely left it when the war came. The parents were flatly against the idea of Renly joining the army, they expected him to become a diplomat. Suddenly the youngest son displayed true Baratheon stubbornness: one clear spring morning he left the house and a month later he wrote a letter saying that he joined the Royal Air Force.

 _Imagine blue skies, neckbreaking speed, and I'm flying faster than the wind bringing victory to England,_ Renly wrote in his short messages home. He hadn't been in a single battle, but he already saw it as a stage where he was to play a significant and impressive part.

The war came to Renly in a plain white envelope with the news of the latest London air raid in Stannis' neat angular writing.

 

X X X

 

They met in liberated Paris. Stannis and Renly took part of the interallied operation while Robert was ashore recovering from an injury.

Renly was late again, he always liked to make people wait and always made a show of arriving.

At first the conversation dragged: Stannis was never the one to talk much while Robert was uncharacteristically quiet, however he came out of the shell after the first whiskey.

"How's your flap-eared girlfriend doing? Is she still waiting for you?" he asked.

"Yes, she does," Stannis answered dryly. "It's very important, you know, to have someone waiting for you. That's not something you can boast about, is it?"

"But of course," Robert waved a hand. "I have my favourite younger brothers, don't I?"

Stannis stared at him: Robert was smiling, but his dark blue eyes were unusually grave. If the Baratheons could look at themselves they'd have noted with surprise that they were more similar than ever before. It seemed the war washed out everything alien and artificial, grinded down the edges. And only their essence remained: strength, bravery and sincerity.

Now, Robert didn't think it was a weakness to tell Stannis about Ned's death. Now, Stannis didn't think it was a weakness to express sincere condolences and order more whiskey for his brother.

"Do you know what I'd like to do after the war?" Robert said. "Go hunting. A real English hunt, a fox hunt or a boar hunt. I want to hold a rifle and be absolutely sure that I'll use it only for hunting. I want clammy fogs, the smell of rotting leaves and the silence of the forest - all that jazz."

Stannis allowed himself to smile a little. It looked like he was beginning to know his brother.

Then Renly turned up whistling the tune _It's a long way to Tipperary_ (*).

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

It seemed Robert came to his senses after a bout of sentimentality.

"I was saying”, he wiggled out, "that I don't want to stay in Paris. Maybe I'll go ashore and will go to fight in Germany. Do you remember the trip through Saxony with our parents? And there was that blonde with great tits?"

"Cercei von Lannister?"

"Right!" Robert guffawed. "I'd fuck her into the ground! Later I'd cut her Nazi throat, but first..."

Renly bit into the peach he was holding.

"And I'd screw her brother," he said dreamily.

Robert grimaced.

"The war hasn't changed you, Ren, has it?"

"Quite the opposite, Robert! Do you know who gave me this peach? A young French officer. He said, _'Mon cher ami_ , it must have been ages since you, Englishmen, had any fruit'. He's unbelievably handsome, by the way. Goes by the name of Loras."

"I'm not interested, Renly."

The youngest Baratheon winked at Stannis.

"Don't judge too harshly, dear. You're older, but you still have a lot to learn..."

 

X X X

 

Stannis was to learn that Robert didn't go ashore, of course. True to the sea he went on another hunt after a German submarine, and died there. A torpedo out of U-85(**) turned his brother's submarine into a mess of steel and flesh.

Stannis was to learn that in the last days of war Renly was murdered by a woman... one of the communists. Stannis would try to learn why she knifed Renly, and he would hear a lot of speculation, each one more ridiculous than the previous one. Renly's death would remain a mystery.

Right now, though, Stannis was just silently drinking whiskey with his brothers in a cafe on the elegant old-fashioned Montmartre. And Paris, ravaged by the war, was falling into fitful sleep. It was a long way to Tipperary.

**Author's Note:**

> (*) "It's a long way to Tipperary" is a popular British marching song.  
> (**) U-85 submarines had a wild boar on the emblem.


End file.
